Angela Brazil

“ Capri, betwixt the glow of the fading sunset and the light of the rising full moon, was a veritable land of romance, with its domed eastern-looking houses set in a mass of vines and lemon trees, and the luscious scent of its many flowers wafted on the evening air. It seemed no less attractive in the morning, when, after drinking their coffee in a rose-covered arbor that stood at the bottom of their landlady's orange grove, they wandered away through the bosco and up on to [278] the open hillside. ”

“ It was whispered that Miss Morley herself meant to come, disguised as Hiawatha, that Miss Rodgers had offered a gold wrist-watch as first prize, and that there were yards of gorgeous materials in the storeroom to be had for the asking. The thrill of these manifold possibilities was sufficient to eclipse the attractions of their former intentions for the evening's amusement. It was really more interesting to evolve costumes than plan tricks. Every true daughter of Eve loves to look her best, and womanhood, even in the bud, cannot withstand the supreme magnet of clothes. ”

“ They don't seem to mind people treading on their toes. It's infectious. I catch myself smiling, and I'd jolly well frown as a rule if any one yanked a basket into my back."
"I think it's the climate," remarked Irene. "In a London tram most faces don't look too cheerful, but with this sky overhead people are simply chirping like crickets. It's like a perpetual summer holiday."
The car was rattling along the steep coast road through miles of glorious scenery. On the left was an ultramarine sea, with white-sailed boats, and to the right lay cliffs and olive groves. ”

“ Bond ushered his visitors inside, closed the door, pressed a button, and immediately they shot aloft, landing ultimately in a kiosk in Count Sutri's garden at the top of the cliff. Feeling as if a magician had used occult means to transport them back to safety, the girls gazed round highly delighted to find themselves out of the cove. Their host, to whom they hastily confided some details of how they had penetrated into his premises, fetched a ladder, and by its aid they mounted to the roof of the shed, and skipped over the wall on to the top of their own wood-hut. ”

“ In her efforts to watch everything at once Delia craned her neck through the window of the car and away went her school hat, sailing over a bridge and down into a deep ravine below, lost forever so far as she was concerned, as the tram certainly would not stop and wait while she searched for it.
"You've come down a peg in life, old sport, that's all," laughed Carrie. "In Italy wearing a hat is a sign of gentility. No work-girl ever has one on her head even on Sundays. ”

“ In the basin of the great marble fountain white arum lilies were blooming, geraniums trailed from tall vases, and palms, bamboos, and other exotics backed the row of lemon trees at the end of the paved walk. Here and there marble benches were arranged round tables in specially constructed arbors.
"These are our summer classrooms," explained Peachy. "When it's blazingly hot we do lessons here early in the mornings, and it's ripping. No, we don't use them at this time of the year, because the marble is cold to sit upon, and the garden is damp really, although it looks so jolly. ”

“ A single day is very brief space in which to see the beauties of Paris, but the Beverleys managed to fit a great deal into it, and to include among their activities a peep at the Louvre, a drive in the Bois de Boulogne, a visit to Napoleon's Tomb, half an hour in a cinema, and a rush through several of the finest and largest shops.
"It's different from London—quite!" decided Irene, at the end of the jaunt. "It's lighter and brighter, somehow, and the streets are wider and have more trees planted in them. ”

“ Here we all are, girls from England, America, and the British Colonies, of the same race and speaking the same language. Let us make an Anglo-Saxon League, and pledge ourselves that wherever we go over the face of the world we will carry with us the best traditions. We're out for Peace, not War, and Peace comes through sympathy. The women of those great eastern nations, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Hindoos, who are only just awakening to a sense of freedom, will look to us Westerners for their example. ”

“ In another year or so you should be able to live with him altogether and be the companion to him that he needs. You say you envy girls with many brothers and sisters, but there's another side to that—if you're the only child you get the whole of the love. Remember you're all your father has, and let him see that you care. It's a greater thing to be a good daughter than to be the favorite of the school. If you keep that object in view you ought to have many years of happiness before you."
"I know. I was forgetting that side of it," said Lorna slowly. ”

“ Irene quickly joined her family, and had much to say to them, and many questions to ask about their doings in Naples.
"I say, Renie," whispered Vincent, suddenly interrupting her, "tell me who's that lovely girl? She looked the best in the whole of your tableau."
Irene followed his glance to the yellow-clad figure handing the teacups which Miss Morley was filling.
"That's Lorna. One of my best chums. Yes, that costume suits her. I want to bring her to speak to Mother. Yes, Lorna, you must come. I simply shan't let you run away. Mummie darling, this is Lorna. We room together, you know." ”

“ Irene laughed softly. The little flaxen-haired girl attracted her; she felt she would have gravitated towards her compartment rather than have avoided her. But traveling companions were evidently more a matter of chance than choice, for the crowd that turned out of the train at Dover became mixed and mingled like the colored bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. ”

“ Think of the amazement of the Starry Circle, when they're expecting us to do a pale copy of their own stunt, to see us posed as a tableau, and everybody clapping the roof off."
"It would be rather sporty."
"Only I did so want to dress up as a kangaroo," mourned Joan dolefully.
"You shall be Australia instead, and you'll look far nicer. I'll guarantee to make you ever so pretty. It's to be an Anglo-American pageant, to symbolize the school. We'll have Columbia and Britannia and all her colonies, in a sort of entente cordiale. ”

“ Never mind. It will be something to look forward to. We always play paper games there, and they're such fun. There I am again! Well, if you went to-day it would be over and done with by to-morrow, and it's still all to come. That's one way of taking it."
"Oh, it's all very well to moralize!" grumped Lorna, who was feeling thoroughly cross. "It's easy enough to count up other people's blessings. I'm a blighted blossom!"
quoted Peachy with an extra wide grin. "Cheer up! Don't you realize it's only ten days to half-term? Oh, do, for goodness' sake, look less like a statue of melancholy! ”

“ You can't suddenly meet a man when you've plenty of sea-room, can you?"
"No, no, Dad!" said Lorna, trying to soothe him. "We can walk down the steps to the cove and get [307] the skiff, and be quite away from everybody once we are on the sea."
She was ready to humor his every whim, for in the blackness of her trouble nothing seemed at present to really matter. The whirling eddies of her thoughts rushed through her brain in a perpetual series of questions and answers. Must hate strike the death knell of love? Surely the only thing to do with an injury is to forgive it. ”

“ Doesn't exactly seem you, somehow!"
"Hardly," replied Irene, with her head inside a cupboard. "Fact is, I'm looking for my history book. I can't think where the wretched thing has gone to. School begins to-morrow, and I haven't touched my holiday tasks yet; and what Miss Gordon will say if I come without those exercises I can't imagine. I'm sure I flung all my books into this cupboard, and, of course, here's the chemistry, which I don't want, but never so much as a single leaf of the history. Don't grin! You aggravate me. I believe you've taken it away to tease me. Have you? Confess now! ”

“ She had never possessed a sister or anything little of her own to love, and it was a new experience to find a girl, rather small and younger than herself, who clung to her and seemed actually fond of her. Life, which had hitherto been chilly and self-centered, suddenly grew warm. ”

“ The girls came scurrying, flushed after their games of tennis, and flung themselves down, some on the marble steps and some on the tiled seat. Bertha, as the Camellia Buds had suspected, was evidently the high priestess, and opened the ceremony without delay.
"Members of the Starry Circle," she began hurriedly, "repeat your oath."
"We vow to be loyal to one another and to our President, and never to reveal the secrets of our society," recited seven voices in reply.
("Aha!" chuckled Peachy to herself, in the depths of the gigantic jar. "Got the name of your precious sorority slap-bang off!") ”

“ People have always been so nice till I came here!"
"That's exactly the reason," said Irene, grasping the situation and explaining it truthfully. "You've been accustomed to be petted by everybody, and after all why should the other girls in your form pet you? You don't pet them, do you?"
"N-n-o!"
Désirée's eyes were round with amazement.
"Well, can't you see school's a matter of give and take? If you do something for the rest they'll possibly like you, but they won't fall on your neck just out of sheer good nature. ”

“ As a rule we can't deliberately choose our soul-friends. Fate just seems to send them along and we must accept them with all their faults or go without. It certainly does not do to be too particular, or we may soon find ourselves chumless in the world. Irene was rather lovelorn for Peachy, but that bright little American, besides being in an upper dormitory, was before-appropriated by other "heart-to-hearties," and, though she held out the palm of good fellowship, was too staunch a character to desert old friends for new. ”

“ You want one too, Lorna? Hooray! We'll make a Colony of Camellia Buds on the little island and spend the summer here. We may be globe-trotters and all the rest of it, but I vote we get up a good old Anglo-Saxon League and stick together for better or for worse. I'll buy a Union Jack to-day if the Cameron Clan will promise to wave the Stars and Stripes, and sing 'Yankee Doodle' with 'Auld Lang Syne.'"
"We've welded America already into the clan, dear bairn," smiled Mrs. Cameron. "No other visitor keeps us alive like you do." ”

“ The girls leaned on the low wall and shuddered as they gazed down the precipice.
"Antonio and Dominica say that dwarfs live in the caves down there," remarked Peachy. "Half the people in the town believe in them, but they're too afraid to go and see because the dwarfs have 'the evil eye,' and would bring them bad luck."
"What superstitious nonsense!" laughed Rachel. "How can they make up such stuff?"
"Not altogether such nonsense as you think," corrected Miss Bickford, who was a student of archæology; "indeed I find it intensely interesting. It's a case of survival of tradition. ”

“ In justice to the girls at the Villa Camellia it is [88] only fair to say that any separation was entirely of Lorna's own making. Had she been more expansive she would have readily enough found friends. No one knew of the misery of her home life, and she was simply judged as what her schoolfellows thought her—a queer-tempered crank who refused to join in the general fun of the place, and in consequence was left out of most things.
Irene, pleasant and hail-fellow-well-met with all comers, had at once noticed this attitude of the others towards Lorna. ”

“ You'll see it will please Miss Morley and Miss Rodgers no end. That Starry Circle will be just aching with envy. They'll wish they'd been in it. It will absolutely take the wind out of their sails and lay them flat."
"Peachy Proctor, there's a spice of genius in your composition," said Jess admiringly. "I could never have thought of that myself."
"Oh, fiddlesticks! Glad you approve though. Now what we've got to do is to hustle up and get busy over costumes. They'll take some contriving. Hide all your best things away from the Stars, or they'll be commandeering them. Mabel has no conscience. ”

“ CHAPTER VI Among the Olive Groves
Quite by accident as it seemed, the Sorority of the Camellia Buds had turned itself from a society instituted for mutual protection and fun into a Crusaders' Union, pledged, like Spenser's Red Cross Knight, to avenge the wrongs of distressed damsels in the junior forms. The ring of battle certainly added a spice of excitement to their secret. It was much more interesting to interfere personally on behalf of their protégées than to place debatable matters before the prefects. If war were involved with another sorority it could not be helped. ”

“ We've decided to go to the Blue Grotto to-day. Who cares to join us?"
This was an expedition which could only be undertaken when the sea was absolutely calm, so, as even the Mediterranean may be treacherous, and sudden squalls can lash its smooth surface into waves, it was wise to take advantage of a cloudless day.
"We'll start early, so as to arrive there before the steamer, and have the grotto to ourselves, instead of going in with a rabble of tourists," decreed Hilton Preston.
"Four boatfuls of us will be a big enough party," agreed Vincent. "They say the best light is at about eleven." ”

“ Jess, in plaid and tam-o'-shanter, stood for her native Scotland; Peachy, with fringed leather leggings and cowboy's hat, was a ranch-girl; Joan in a somewhat similar costume represented "the bush" in Australia; Sheila in a white coat trimmed plentifully with cotton wool made a pretty Canada; Irene was an Irish colleen; Mary, with bunches of mimosa, typified South Africa; and Esther, gorgeous in Oriental drapery and numerous necklaces, was an Indian princess. But perhaps the most successful costume of all was Lorna's. ”

“ Are you willing to join and to take the pledges?"
"Yes, thanks, but please what's a sorority?" ventured Irene meekly.
Two or three distinct snickers were heard from underneath the black masks, but a voice murmured, "Order!" and the sounds promptly ceased.
"A sorority is a secret sisterhood," explained the President, "just the same as a fraternity is a brotherhood. We call ourselves 'The Camellia Buds,' and we're members of the Transition who have banded ourselves together for the purposes of mutual protection. It's a great honor to be elected. ”

“ Carson, haunted to the verge of insanity by the terror of discovery, was now obsessed with the one idea of escape from Mr. Beverley. He no longer felt safe on the island. Any moment he dreaded to meet faces that would betray recognition of his past. The calm and content of his visit were utterly shattered, and a sudden violent impulse urged him to return to Naples.
"Capri is not large enough to hold myself and David Beverley," he declared. "We'll go back by the night boat, Lorna. Meantime we'll borrow Signor Verdi's skiff and paddle about among the rocks. I feel easier on water than on land. ”

“ They all scurried along the path, and suddenly to the left, instead of the high ridge of cinders, they could look down into a deep rocky ravine. From this hollow vapors were rising as from a witch's cauldron, but every now and then the wind dispersed them as if lifting a veil, revealing a glimpse of the crater. At the bottom of the ravine stood a great cone, from the mouth of which poured dense clouds of smoke, and between the smoke could be seen fire, as if the interior of the cone were a red-hot furnace. ”